(TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut offering from a Russian band called Evil Shine.)
The Russians are currently producing some of the most interesting music in the metal landscape. The way the scene has exploded in recent years (and especially in recent months) has been quite astounding. I now have another excellent discovery from the land of the former Red Army: Evil Shine.
I recommended the video for the song “I Hate Your Kind” to Islander, and he included it in a post not too long ago. Evil Shine play a style of primal, weighty, beefy, groove metal with a very tribal characteristic to it. This stuff is an acquired taste, but my opinion after several listens to their debut The Evil One is that this is some intense, brutal, terrifying shit.
The opening instrumental simply called “Intro” is a haunting piece that has the oddity of being done using really shitty MIDI. And it works. It’s a very creepy, eerily foreboding piece that leads into the true opener “The Primal Hunger” excellently. In that song, the riffs and drums sound like they’re rising up from a swamp or a sewer full of liquefied human flesh. As it unfolds, the sound is that of a grotesque giant with a jackhammer for one fist and a sledgehammer for the other coming straight at you.
The guitars are tuned low, the drums are to the point — bludgeoning and war-chant inducing, while the vocals are disgusting, vomit-filled, and deathly. The riffing itself consists of very simplistic, open-note sludge drones, jagged ice-pick chugs, and some atonal and alien melodies.
Evil Shine’s sound is extremely disorienting in its approach, to say the least. I can’t say I’ve heard anything like this in a very long time, or maybe ever. The music essentially calls to mind (here comes the hate mail) ideas of a brutal and extreme version of old Korn, old Machine Head, old Slipknot, you get the idea. The concept is pulled off wonderfully, devoid of every single thing wrong with the aforementioned bands, while retaining the simplistic, propulsive anger seething through the audio.
This musical style of the songs is pretty consistent throughout the album, so there really isn’t much additional detail I can provide beyond what I’ve already described.
It’s good shit. Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkoVpdlVE2Y
5 Responses to “EVIL SHINE: “THE EVIL ONE””
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It’s decent, didn’t floor me but maybe I just need repeated listens.
I totally agree about the Russian thing, they seem to be able to take whats going on in North America/Europe and produce this awesome Russian bastardization of it
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/16421272.jpg
I liked the groove. The song had a nice groove and it really just steamrolled right through it. Which is think it was you were referring to with them being like Korn, et al. without all their problems.
The vocals were pretty good, too…I’ll have to give it a few more listens though.
What was with the video? Who were the masks supposed to be of? I recognized none of the people.
The masks are the faces of Russian pop stars and celebrities.
I can’t get past the screamo vocals myself. I would have never pegged them as a Russian band though. Good to know they produce more than pagan/folk bands these days